GenCon Indy 2010 Day 3 and 4: The Wrap-Up!

I’m home from the exhaustingly fun GenCon. So exhausting in fact, that I neglected to post about the last two days on their respective evenings as I had originally planned.

So here goes: the last two days!

We got up bright and early to wait in line for Hickman’s Killer Breakfast, an event in which Tracy Hickman and his wife Laura entertain us with song and DnD theater. Volunteers, called “victims,” are called up to the dnD table to be killed by Tracy, their merciless DM. They must state how they got there, and if their answer is entertaining, Tracy lets hem live

Day 3 (Saturday):

We got up bright and early to wait in line for Hickman’s Killer Breakfast, an event in which Tracy Hickman and his wife Laura entertain us with song and DnD theater. Volunteers, called “victims,” are called up to the DnD table to be killed by Tracy, their merciless DM. Each victim must state how they got there, and if their answer is entertaining, Tracy lets them live…for the time being. If they ramble on or aren’t interesting enough, he declares “YOU DIE,” banishing them from the table. Then he presents a quick scenario and asks each player/victim what they do. This is generally where the rest of the people die, to be quickly replaced by new victims.

It’s fun DnD theater, made better by Tracy’s quick wit, banter with Laura, and the victim’s funny characters. Oh, but there is no actual breakfast.

After running around the dealer room and eating lunch, we demoed Killer Bunnies: Quest for the Magic Carrot. It was a fun card game, though a little complicated for something so light and fluffy and fast. The game’s graphic designer, Jonathan Young, ran us through it and the game designer, Jeffrey Neil Bellinger, was also in the demo room and gave us some signed cards. Both guys were really fun and nice, and I’m interested to see more from them.

On to BattleTech Bootcamp! My boyfriend John plays BattleTech and he had run me through a game once before. But there’s a lot of info and it was good to have a refresher.

Then we went straight to Flight School for a quick intro game of AeroTech, the flight version of BattleTech. Same thing, but flying, and some small rule variations.

Then The Guild panel! Felicia Day was there with some of the Guild actors: Sandeep Parikh (Zaboo), Jeff Lewis (Vork), and Robin Thorsen (Clara). They filled the one hour with a Q&A from the audience, and spoke a lot about the spirit and nitty-gritty of independent web video. As you can probably surmise, their back and forth banter was very funny, and Felicia is even more beautiful in person.

The last event of the night was learning how to play the card game Citadels, a game by Fantasy Flight. I loved it. There will be a separate blog post on it alone for sure! I’m surprised it’s not rated higher on BGG.

Day 4 (Sunday):

Our teacher, David Dresh, made this. Sadly, we didn't get this far in the 2 hour class.

We learned about making terrain for miniature gaming from David Dresh. Fun and interesting, though I’m not sure I’ll ever get around doing it.

The last game I played at GenCon was Thunderstone. The graphic designer and AEG staffer, Jim Pinto, taught it to us and was a really nice guy. We loved it and bought it on the spot when he offered a discount. Thunderstone is like Dominion with dungeon crawling. That’s all I’ll say for now…until I do a separate blog post on it!

Then we ran around the dealer room before heading out. Saw Settlers of Catan being played on a Microsoft Surface!

Before going to the airport, we actually had to stop at TJ Maxx to get a cart to haul our loot back. The newly heavy duffel bag was otherwise threatening to break John’s back, and I could barely lift it.

I’m usually pretty conservative when it comes to buying stuff. But the GenCon dealer hall cast a powerful over this game geek. Pretty steampunk dice I don’t need? Yes, please! A rubber dragon pet I can wear around my neck? MUST HAVE!! Halfing minis? Gotta buy ‘em all!

Oh hey! I was at GenCon and took that same Green Stuff class with Joe. I was astonished he just passed around some of the figures like he did. I took some other classes with some big-name painter types, Marike Reimer, Zach Lanier (Zach actually saw me a day later and still remembered my name, that was kind of a fun moment), and Amy Brehmer.

I go to GenCon every year and enter the painting contests there. This year was the first year I won something big though. I had no idea you were there!

Also, I totally wanted one of those silly rubber dragons. It just got worse after I saw Felicia wearing one too. But they were pretty hefty. D:

I got to horrify The Guild crew with my 2 Girls 1 Up shirt and completely derailed the entire autograph area while they talked about that video. My husband was so embarrassed, haha.